My closing line of this post is "When Cypherpunks are viewed as "terrorists," we will have done our jobs." So, if this viewpoint offends you, delete this message now. If you don't understand the context of this point, you may be a newbie, or a "warez dood," and should probably delete this message and go back to asking for some new kewl viruses (perhaps on another, more suitable, forum). If you understand the context, but agree or disagree, then of course we can discuss it. At 4:36 PM +0000 12/18/96, attila@primenet.com wrote:
Currently, I am not sure what the charter of cypherpunks really stands for, if anything. As it stands, the list has a far more erudite group than the list it probably should be. certainly more privacy and social engineering issues resulting from the deprivation of privacy than code.
The "charter" is mostly contained in the "welcome message" all subscribers receive. And further elaborations, as Attila of course knows (but maybe some others don't) are fleshed out in the essays we write, the material formerly at the csua/cypherpunks ftp site (I'm not sure it's still there, as it's been a long time since I looked), etc, I agree that "programming" per se was never the focus. Even in the early days, when the remailers were written by E. Hughes and H. Finney, there was essentially zero discussion of the details of the Perl and/or C code...which is not surprising, as the number of people conversant in Perl--and interested at the time the discussion happens--is usally a small number. Maybe 5 people on the list back then could've meaningfully spent time looking at the Perl code and discussing it. As I said, this is hardly surprising. Instead, a wider audience is reached by--and participates in--debates about the overall structure of remailers, the role of latency/accumulation, and so on. (I'm just picking remailers as an example.) Is this "coding"? In a sense, of course it is. And the design criteria overlap with politico-legal discussions, e.g., of the need for extra-jurisdictional remailers, the need for large numbers of them, the advisability of various types of remailer syntax, etc. Keeping with this particular example, not that the remailer operators have their own mailing list to discuss details of current remailer software, issues of blocking, etc. Add to this list other such lists, such as "pgp-dev" and the various crypto lists, and sci.crypt, and sci.crypt.research, and "coderpunks," and this is why I have very little sympathy when people chime in saying discussion of digital cash and crypto anarchy have "no place" on this list (Cypherpunks), that the list is "for coding." Nonsense. (Oh, and there's now Perry's new list. And filtered lists. And on and on.) What's making the list almost unreadable for me today are the noisy posts from newcomers ("doodz, like here are some warez!"), spammers ("make money fast"), insulters ("John Gilmore (fart) is a Sovok apparatchnik"), and unsubscribers {who can't spell and who never seem to read the instructions sent to them).
I don't believe Cypherpunks was ever intended to be a technical forum; I was not on for the first few months so I missed the formative discussions of the elitist few, most of whom, other than founder tcmay, have left for greener pastures.
Well, if the early list activists were Eric Hughes, Hugh Daniel, John Gilmore, and me, only Eric and I were heavy posters in the first months and years. John and Hugh were always low-volume, off doing other things, or not primarily interested in the debate on the mailing list. So, only Eric has moved off to other things. But so have a lot of folks....look at the active posters from the first year. Then the second year. And the third. And the fourth. Lots of changes in names. As expected. People say what they want to say, and hear the same points a bunch of times. And lots of list members have gotten crypto-related jobs...the list is very long. (I'm not claiming that they got the jobs because of our list, but it is interesting the extent to which list members have found work in crypto and security areas.)
For what it's worth, the above is my perception of cypherpunks: an interesting collection of philosopher kings, some of whom are putting their convictions to the means of thwarting the common enemy. It is no accident most subscribers, and certainly all the doers, are anti-government with a preference for social anarchy, the anarchy tempered by some level of realization that the mass of humanity can not govern itself in a society which is inherently evil. However, if the Libertarian Party can not field a better candidate than Harry Brown, anarchy, or a premature dictatorship, it will be. The US is in the last laugh of the oligarchy at this point in time.
Being that I think _democracy_ is our number one problem, I'm not at all surprised that the Libertarian Party is foundering (and floundering, too :-}). Harry Browne, the best candidate ever (and I voted for the first LP candidate, John Hospers, in 1972--yes, 1972), got less of the vote this time around than the past several (weaker) candidates. Oh well. Not suprising. _Direct action_ is what it's all about. Undermining the state through the spread of espionage networks, through undermining faith in the tax system, through even more direct applications of the right tools at the right times. When Cypherpunks are called "terrorists," we will have done our jobs. --Tim May Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."